


the math of love quadrangles

by tusktooth



Category: Be More Chill - Iconis/Tracz
Genre: Ace Christine, Asexual Character, Character Study, Difficult Decisions, F/M, dw michael is gay in this like he is in everything
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-15
Updated: 2019-07-15
Packaged: 2020-06-28 13:57:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,019
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19813723
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tusktooth/pseuds/tusktooth
Summary: Since everything with the SQUIP went down, Christine has found herself growing closer to Michael, Jeremy, and Jake. Whether it be platonic or romantic or somewhere in between, she loves all of them in differing ways, but she finds herself choosing on one to focus on because any more isn't fair to them or herself. Singing and dancing her problems out can work out this conundrum, but what can?





	the math of love quadrangles

**Author's Note:**

> yeehaw my [reverse bang](http://bmcrbb.tumblr.com/) fic is done with amazing art by [professor-poplar on tumblr!](http://professor-poplar.tumblr.com/)  
> I really enjoyed delving into Christine as a character and hope y'all enjoy my attempt at exploring her characterization and relationships!  
> [as always you can find me on tumblr!!!](http://setholiver.tumblr.com/)

When Christine felt emotions, she felt them in an all-encompassing way. Sure, everyone could get consumed by their emotions, but for Christine, it seemed to happen more often and in a bigger way.

Take, for example, play rehearsal. Every time she went, she was filled with an intense excitement that made her want to dance and sing and scream it from the rooftops. Not just the first play rehearsal, not just the final dress rehearsal, but every rehearsal, day after day, week after week.

Or perhaps look at the day before a show. Most of those days, Christine didn’t really know what to make of her emotions other than that she was feeling a lot. There was anxiety and excitement and happiness and sadness that everything would be over soon all in one and amped up to a billion percent. On those days, Christine’s dad or one of her older sisters usually sat with her to make sure she was doing okay. They understood how she felt and they wanted to help.

Then there was the week after her mom died. Christine was still young then, but the intense sadness that she felt overtook her. She had trouble getting out of bed or eating or doing anything really. All she wanted that week was a hug from her mom, and that was the one thing she couldn’t have.

The one emotion that seemed to be the most intense and utterly confusing for Christine was love.

Christine knew that there were many different kinds of love and sometimes she struggled to differentiate them. The one thing she seemed to know for sure at this time was that sexual love wasn’t really something that she felt. The line between platonic and romantic, though, often became blurred for her. She often was unsure exactly if the intense feelings she felt toward someone were out of an extreme desire to be their friend or if what she truly wanted was something more.

Somehow, in all of this, Christine had gotten herself caught between three guys, feeling varying types and degrees of love toward each of them. Every since the Jenna-dubbed “SQUIP-cident,” Christine had gotten closer with everyone involved and now considered them to be some of her closest friends ever. With Michael, Jeremy, and Jake, however, she felt something stronger.

Her feelings toward Michael were easiest to define. That was a platonic love. Michael was gay and she had known it before she had even gotten to know him very well. She always thought that he had seemed nice, seeing him around school with Jeremy. He seemed to feel emotions strongly too, especially excitement, and she appreciated that the two of them had that in common. While she was passionate about theater, he was passionate about video games and they both let their passions consume them unapologetically.

Michael seemed to need more close friends, too. When Jeremy abandoned him due to the manipulation of the SQUIP, Michael had struggled immensely. After she had learned this and they had gotten closer, Christine had felt terrible that she hadn’t known him well then, that she hadn’t been able to help. The big difference between her and Michael is that he could sometimes be very closed off and refuse to let people in. She had noticed that within their larger friend group, Michael still seemed to keep mostly to himself or engaging with Jeremy. Still, Christine felt like there was an opening there. There was a place for her to worm herself in and build a closer friendship with him. She wouldn’t be as close as Jeremy, of course, but she could be there for him and he could be there for her. It wouldn’t be easy, but it was certainly a possibility if she did what she always did and through every fiber of her being into trying her best to make it happen.

But then there was Jeremy Heere. The love she felt toward Jeremy was probably romantic, though she absolutely loves being his friend as well. They had actually gone out on a few dates the year prior, directly after everything with the SQUIP, but had ultimately decided to call it off, at least for the time being. After everything that had happened, they both needed some time. Jeremy had been through a lot, what with the SQUIP’s trauma and the issues it put forth in his friendships, and he needed to take some time to heal before he would be ready for a relationship. Christine had been with two guys in the span of a couple of weeks, found herself with a whole bunch of new friends, and had been forcibly SQUIPed, so she also needed a break to sort through all the things she was feeling. It seemed that the time that they were taking apart could be coming to an end, but she still was a bit unsure.

Christine liked Jeremy, she really did. He was cute and a little nerdy in the most endearing way. After all, she was kind of nerdy too, just in a different way. And, beyond that, neither of them were ever particularly popular. They were just average people, walking around school and looking forward to the future. A nice bonus was that he seemed to have genuinely enjoyed his time in the play and had signed up again this year. They had shared interests! Beyond that, though, they were different people emotionally. He understood that she felt things strongly, but sometimes it seemed to overwhelm him and, in turn, she often failed to understand how he could hate himself so much sometimes when he was such an amazing person. They weren’t quite compatible in that way yet, but she firmly believed if they got together and they worked on it, they could learn the ins and outs of one another and that one day they could be.

Jake was the most confusing. Sometimes, Christine couldn’t exactly put a finger on whether her love for him was platonic, romantic, or some combination of the two. There were plenty of things she loved about him for certain: his kindness, how good of a listener he was, how hard he worked, but often she wasn’t sure if she loved those qualities because they were the making of a potential boyfriend or of a potential friend or, as she often found herself considering, both.

Their brief time together had been complicated in every sense of the word. Jake had just gotten out of a relationship with Chloe, which hadn’t exactly been 100% healthy for either of them to say the lease. He was somewhat damaged at the time because, while he had genuinely liked Christine, she could tell that part of him was still caught up in his old relationship, a ghost in his past, and Chloe always seemed like the girl he was “supposed to” be with.

“Supposed to” was a big part of Jake’s life, actually, as he had told Christine one late night months after the SQUIP-cident and their failed attempt at a relationship. 

He was supposed to be with Chloe because she was conventionally attractive and popular, but that didn’t work out because it turned out that she was a lesbian, something that she had come to realize and accept with the support of her newfound friend group.

He was supposed to be straight. He was popular and cool and manly. He wasn’t supposed to look at guys and feel the same way that he felt about girls sometimes.

He was supposed to put sports before other activities. He was an athlete and athletes were cool. Except he loved the play. He loved it more then half the sports he did.

Jake Dillinger was supposed to do everything he could and more. He was supposed to be perfect with good grades, talent in almost everything, a high status in the high school popularity scheme, and an attractive body. He was supposed to be perfect because then maybe his parents would come back and choose to stay with him.

But Jake wasn’t everything he was supposed to be, and Christine could tell how much it hurt him to go day after day knowing his parents were who knows where and that he was alone. It was one of the things that drew the two of them together. Though his parents were still alive and her mother had died, there was a sense of loss that they shared and an openness that had sprung up in their friendship allowing the two of them to talk about everything and anything.

Screw whoever Jake was supposed to be, he was an amazing person as is and she cherished him for this. But still, after all this time hanging out with him, she couldn’t tell if she truly loved him romantically or if her attraction was merely platonic and she desired a closer friend in him to confide in and be supported by.

So, here was where Christine found herself caught: full of extremely overwhelming emotions and between three different guys that she cared for. She absolutely hated it. Christine was an independent woman who determined her own self worth (spoiler alert: she was worth a lot!!!) and she hated that her feelings were revolving around men rather than herself.

She hated more that she was having so much trouble sorting through them. She would dance and sing when she was home alone, trying to calm herself through musical numbers of her own creation, the one thing that had once worked without fail to allow her to take a step back and analyze her situations, but it hadn’t done anything to help recently.

Christine also tried to ask her older sisters for advice, but that was a major dead end. Neither of them were able to offer a concrete suggestion on what she should do moving forward and, even if they had, Christine probably wouldn’t have listened to them anyway because it was clear to her that, as much as she explained the situation, they couldn’t really understand her perspective on any of it.

For a moment, Christine considered asking her dad for advice but decided against it. Christine wasn’t the type of person to shy away from awkward situations of conversations, but this wasn’t exactly something that she was sure that she wanted to speak to her father about.

She stopped to think, trying to determine which of her friends to talk about. Obviously Michael, Jeremy, and Jake were out. They were far too close to the situation to be any help. Jenna was out because, as much as Christine loved her friend, she didn’t want the entire school to know about what she was going through. Chloe was out too because, although they had grown to be what Christine considered friends, they weren’t as close to each other as they were to their other friends and she wasn’t sure she was comfortable sharing all this with her.

That left two people: Rich and Brooke and, because Christine evidently wasn’t the best decision maker, she decided that she would ask both of them.

They met at the nearby Pinkberry since it was Brooke’s favorite place on Earth that she happened to work at, which meant that it was convenient. And, well, the fact that they all got discounts on delicious froyo that Christine could load with as many gummy bears as she pleased was a bonus.

After Christine had filled her two friends in on the pickle that she was going through, both of them had to pause for a moment to fully consider the scenario.

Rich was the one who spoke first. “I think you should go for all of it. If you think you can gain happiness from each of them, then you should go all in, granted that you communicate the situation effectively to all three of them. That way you can have maximal happiness. The happiest happy to ever happy.”

She considered it for a moment. It was a very Rich response. He responded to most situations head on and put all of himself into everything that he did. Rich rarely had regrets because he didn’t hesitate to do what was best for him and refused to apologize for being himself, not after everything with the SQUIP, that is.

But would that work for Christine? Probably not, she supposed. Like Rich, she was unapologetically herself and worked as hard as she could toward her goals. Their differences emerged in the fact that Christine was far more concerned with the impact of her actions on others, even if it was somewhat at the expense of her own happiness.

If she took Rich’s advice, Christine wasn’t sure that she would be able to dedicate enough time to each of them. Her time was already split plenty of ways, what with school and theater and family and her social life. Splitting it even further could cause the boys to feel neglected by her or like they didn’t take any level of priority in her life.

Christine shook her head. “I’d love to have it all, Rich, but I don’t know if I can. It would be too much.”

“Maybe with that attitude,” he replied.

Brooke rolled her eyes. “Christine, you need to make a comprehensive pros and cons list, sparing no details of each potential outcome. Then think of it like a math problem. Which path will give you your desired solution?”

Her proposed solution was very on brand for her. While Christine worked through her problems with song and dance, Brooke worked through them with math and logic. While this might  _ sound  _ like the better approach, it wasn’t necessarily true. For example on That Halloween, Brooke had logically reasoned that if people liked sexy cat costumes and people liked dogs, then her sexy dog costume would be a smash hit. Her logic led her straight into a fallacy and the costume fell flat amongst some of the other colorful costumes that night (mostly Jenna’s).

A different approach was exactly what Christine needed now, though. If her usual method wasn’t working out, then she needed to adopt a new one. And math was the perfect solution when you found yourself in a love triangle, right? Or was it a quadrangle? Quadrilateral? But wouldn’t that imply that the boys were in love with each other? Hell, they might be. Wait. Do love triangles even make sense? Shouldn’t they just be angles?

Oh, right. Her problem. A logical approach would be nice, so let’s go back to the start, evaluating the math behind her potential happiness.

Michael Mell. Christine had never really  _ had  _ a best friend before. Sure, she had a few friends here and there and she had her sisters, but the concept of a best friend was obscure to her. Being that intimately close with somebody, even platonically, was terrifying to her and yet she craved it nonetheless. If she pursued this route, she could finally have that. Jeremy would probably always be the most important person in Michael’s life. Christine knew that and had absolutely no desire to change that, but she could be important to him too. It would be beneficial for her to have a friend to share everything with. She wasn’t very closed off and she often had difficulty determining what was appropriate to say to people, but sometimes she knew something should be off limits and, with a best friend, maybe those things wouldn’t be so bad to get off of her chest anymore. Happiness outlook? Pretty good, probably.

Next was Jeremy Heere. There was no denying that they liked each other. Small moments and shared smiles between them were a regular occurrence and just about everyone ever knew that there was something there. Jeremy thought she was absolutely perfect just how she was and she felt the same about him. Christine knew that a lot of people thought that to be true of their relationships, but it just flat out wasn’t the truth. It’s not inherently bad to look at someone you love and silently wish that certain aspects were slightly different, so long as you still accept and love everything that the person is as they are. Seeing perfection in something is rare and, having that in front of her, she wasn’t sure that she’d want it to slip through her fingers.

And finally, there was Jake Dillinger. No matter whether the thing between them turned out to be romantic or platonic or both, she knew that the two of them could be partners. The thing they had had before had  _ worked _ during the brief time that they had it. If the timing had been better, maybe a bit longer after his previous breakup, and the freaking SQUIP hadn’t been meddling in their lives, perhaps they still would have been together until this day. But things were out of their hands and what happened had happened. There was no taking it back and going back to how life was before. There was only moving forward, but Christine knew that if she moved forward with Jake as a major part of her life, she could be moving into something greater.

She tried to form this together in a mathematical way in her head, but all she could come up with was an equilateral triangle with her right smack in the middle. There were three corners, all equal distances away, all of equal greatness, and she had to approach one or she would just remain stuck in the middle of it all. The problem was, she still didn’t know which way to go.

She conveyed this logical conclusion to Brooke and Rich, expressing how her dilemma remained the same.

“Well, I’m not sure that seems very logical to me,” Rich told her. “It still seems like you’re making unnecessary sacrifices. You’re so wrapped up in making a choice that you’re neglecting the fact that you might be able to have more if you just went for it.”

Brooke shook her head. “I see the logic in it and I can see why you’re still conflicted. But here’s the problem: you can’t bring the problem to Rich and I and expect us to solve it for you. Not in like a mean way or anything but this is a highly important and personal decision for you, which means nobody can solve it but you, Christine. If Rich and I were to come to a decision, no matter what it would be, I don’t think you would accept it because this is supposed to be  _ your  _ decision. Not ours.”

“I understand, I guess,” Christine said with a nod. “It doesn’t make the decision any easier, but you’re absolutely right.”

“For what it’s worth though, despite our differing perspectives, Rich did say something that really rang true to me,” Brooke said, placing a hand on Christine’s forearm. “You might be too focused on this choice. Not all shapes are two dimensions. It’s not like you need to choose one of the options necessarily. Maybe the correct answer for you isn’t Michael, Jeremy,  _ or  _ Jake. You’re just so focused on them that you can’t quite make out the other options for you that could be lurking on the sidelines.”

“It sounds like you’re declaring your love for her,” Rich piped in.

Brooke blushed ever so slightly. “Christine, you know that I’m not. I’m just bad at phrasing stuff sometimes. Not that I don’t love you because I  _ do _ , just not like that, okay?”

She smiled and squeezed her friend’s hand. “I’ve got it and I think you phrased it well enough.”

“Do you know what you’re going to do?” Rich asked.

“You know what?” Christine replied. “I think I do.”

* * *

She invited over all three boys to announce her decision. They had all been marginally aware that she was trying to decide what she wanted to do. After all, she hadn’t wanted to keep it a secret from them. That would have just led to unnecessary hurt and, no matter what her decision may be, avoiding hurting the people she considered to be very good friends was always the priority.

And that’s why she had been rushing so much lately anyway. She couldn’t keep the three of them waiting on her forever and, with things building recently, it was now or never.

So now, here they sat on her couch. Christine had expected them to stare at her expectantly and wait for her to speak, but instead, they chatted with each other while she searched her head for the right words. That was a good thing, though. It showed that they also valued their friendships over this “drama.”

Finally, she cleared her throat, getting attention from the three of them.

“I’m guessing you’re wondering why I called the three of you here today,” she began.

“I thought it was because you made a decision on-” Jake started before Michael kicked him in the shin and he yelped in pain. “What the hell, man?”

“Let her speak,” Michael said, holding a quieting finger to his own lips.

“You could have just  _ said _ -” Jake began.

“Shhhh,” Jeremy told them, nodding toward Christine. This time, they all remained quiet.

“You’re right, Jake,” she said. “I have finally made my decision. Let me preface this with it was a lot of work and I tried basically everything to decide, even going beyond my normal decisionmaking methods and getting outside help. I want you all to know that I care deeply for all of you in varying ways, whether it be platonic or romantic, but I can’t just throw my all into pursuing all three of you at once. It’s not fair to me and it’s not fair to any of you.”

“So what did you decide?” Jeremy asked.

“After much deliberation, I’ve decided that the person that I need to focus all of my energies on is-,” she simulated a drumroll on her legs before continuing, “-me.”

The three of them glanced at each other for a moment, briefly coming to some kind of nonverbal agreement, and all smiled at her.

“I think we can all see that’s a very good decision,” Michael told her. “You have to put yourself first and, while we’ll all be friends and care about each other no matter what, it’s okay to leave it at that.”

“Besides, college is coming up,” Jake added. “School is like  _ super  _ important right now.”

“And the spring musical is only a few months away,” Jeremy piped in. “It’s your last one before graduation and you have to go out with a bang.”  
She grinned widely. “I’m glad you all understand where I’m coming from.”

“Of course we do, Christine,” Jeremy said. “We’re your friends. And, besides, we’re all in similar places right now. We can all understand where you’re coming from because we’re also graduating soon and we all have interests that take up a decent amount of our time. Sometimes the best answer to a decision is to create a new one.”

“All we want is you in our lives,” Jake told her. “I think, for all of us, we’d accept you as only a normal friend if that was what was going to make you happiest. We want you to be happy because you’re like super cool.”

“So none of you feel hurt about this?” she asked cautiously.

“Of course not,” Michael said. “We all knew that there was at least a ⅔ chance of things staying the way they are with you and, while I’d love a second best friend, keeping you as a normal good friend is fine by me.”

“Can we go get food now?” Jake asked. “Because I’m like, super hungry.”

“Oh, hell yeah,” Michael agreed.

“Christine, do you want to come?” Jeremy asked.

She nodded. Sure, she didn’t have a new best friend or a new boyfriend or someone that was somehow in between, but she had friends that appreciated her for the person that she truly was and, in the end, was there really anything that could be better than that?


End file.
